Co-Illusion

Where are we? Is it the tower of Babel, collective collusive amnesia, or the end of consciousness? Co-Illusion with its brilliant on-the-spot reportage and striking visuals calls us to more rigorous attention to the propaganda crisis and our fraught future. This book is a meditation, a summons, a brilliant collaboration and intervention for the dark age. Let's have the conversation now.

Anne Waldman, author of Trickster Feminism; founder and curator of The Jack Kerouac School of Poetics, Naropa University

As through a glass darkly, the crackling pages of these daily dispatches testify to the terrifying future that is now upon us. Like theaters of cruelty ablaze with hysteria and witchcraft, the national conventions for the presidency provide a uniquely profound view of the madness of power.

Michael Taussig, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University

Co-Illusion is a tenacious account of a manipulated, degraded communication era in American politics and perceptions. David Levi Strauss navigates insight and indignity in vivid “dispatches” and brisk reflections. An intrepid and precise interpreter of images, media, and rhetoric, he offers an urgent summons for resistance and reimagination.

Patricia C. Phillips, Chief Academic Officer/Academic Dean at Moore College of Art & Design and independent writer and curator

David Levi Strauss's Co-Illusion: Dispatches from the End of Communication asks the fundamental question about the Trump presidency: 'How did we get here?' An art critic and scholar of photography, Strauss grounds his observations and speculation in a deep understanding of the image, which can upend rational discourse and prevailing wisdom with astonishing speed.

The Brooklyn Rail

Strauss's texts are essential writing today, in a media environment run amok.

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